[Footnote 15: Collins in his pamphlet quotes a Dr. Grabe, who, following the Jewish code of rules as regards food, considered the eating of blood one of the points on which the Church did not insist against. In the text Swift ridicules this in the reference to "black pudding." [T. S.]
When I see an honest freethinking bishop endeavour to destroy the power and privileges of the Church, and Dr. Atterbury angry with him for it, and calling it "dirty work," what can I conclude, by virtue of being a freethinker, but that Christianity is all a cheat?
Mr. Whiston has published several tracts, wherein he absolutely denies the divinity of Christ: A bishop tells him, "Sir, in any matter where you have the Church's judgment against you, you should be careful not to break the peace of the Church, by writing against it, though you are sure you are in the right."[16] Now my opinion is directly contrary; and I affirm, that if ten thousand freethinkers thought differently from the received doctrine, and from each other, they would be all in duty bound to publish their thoughts (provided they were all sure of being in the right) though it broke the peace of the Church and state ten thousand times.
[Footnote 16: Swift's "Sermon on the Trinity," as well as a passage in his "Thoughts upon Religion," shews the weight which he attached to this important argument. [S.]
And here I must take leave to tell you, although you cannot but have perceived it from what I have already said, and shall be still more amply convinced by what is to follow; that freethinking signifies nothing, without freespeaking and freewriting. It is the indispensable duty of a freethinker, to endeavour forcing all the world to think as he does, and by that means make them freethinkers too. You are also to understand, that I allow no man to be a freethinker, any further than as he differs from the received doctrines of religion. Where a man falls in, though by perfect chance, with what is generally believed, he is in that point a confined and limited thinker; and you shall see by and by, that I celebrate those for the noblest freethinkers in every age, who differed from the religion of their countries in the most fundamental points, and especially in those which bear any analogy to the chief fundamentals of religion among us.
Another trick of the priests is, to charge all men with atheism, who have more wit than themselves; which therefore I expect will be my case for writing this discourse: This is what makes them so implacable against Mr. Gildon, Dr. Tindal, Mr. Toland,[17] and myself, and when they call us wits, atheists, it provokes us to be freethinkers.
[Footnote 17: See notes on pp. 9, 79, 80, 82.]
Again; the priests cannot agree when their Scripture was written. They differ about the number of canonical books, and the various readings. Now those few among us who understand Latin, are careful to tell this to our disciples, who presently fall a-freethinking, that the Bible is a book not to be depended upon in anything at all.
There is another thing, that mightily spreads freethinking, which I believe you would hardly guess. The priests have got a way of late of writing books against freethinking; I mean treatises in dialogue, where they introduce atheists, deists, sceptics, and Socinians offering their several arguments. Now these freethinkers are too hard for the priests themselves in their own books; and how can it be otherwise? For if the arguments usually offered by atheists, are fairly represented in these books, they must needs convert everybody that reads them; because atheists, deists, sceptics, and Socinians, have certainly better arguments to maintain their opinions, than any the priests can produce to maintain the contrary.
Mr. Creech,[18] a priest, translated Lucretius into English, which is a complete system of atheism; and several young students, who were afterwards priests, wrote verses in praise of this translation. The arguments against Providence in that book are so strong, that they have added mightily to the number of freethinkers.